Thomas Gainsborough

The feathery brushwork of his mature work and rich sense of colour contribute to the enduring popularity of his portraits. Unlike Reynolds, he avoids references to Italian Renaissance art or the Antique, and shows his sitters in fashionable contemporary dress. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes.

He was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the son of a wool manufacturer. The artist spent his childhood at what is now Gainsborough’s House, on Gainsborough Street, Sudbury. He trained in London, and set up in practice in Ipswich about 1752. In 1759 he moved to Bath, a fashionable spa town, attracting many clients for his portraits. He later resided there, following the death of his father in 1748 and before his move to Ipswich.

When he was still a boy he impressed his father with his drawing and painting skills, and he almost certainly had painted heads and small landscapes by the time he was ten years old, including a miniature self-portrait. Gainsborough was allowed to leave home in 1740 to study art in London, where he trained under engraver Hubert Gravelot but became associated with William Hogarth and his school. He assisted Francis Hayman in the decoration of the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, and contributed one image to the decoration of what is now the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children.

In 1746, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, who had settled a £200 annuity on her. In 1752, he and his family, now including two daughters, Mary (“Molly”, 1750–1826) and Margaret (“Peggy”, 1751–1820), moved to Ipswich. Commissions for portraits increased, but his clients included mainly local merchants and squires. He had to borrow against his wife’s annuity.

The art historian Michael Rosenthal described Gainsborough as “one of the most technically proficient and, at the same time, most experimental artists of his time”. He was noted for the speed with which he applied paint, and he worked more from observations of nature (and of human nature) than from application of formal academic rules. The poetic sensibility of his paintings caused Constable to say, “On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them.”

Gainsborough’s enthusiasm for landscapes is shown in the way he merged figures of the portraits with the scenes behind them. His landscapes were often painted at night by candlelight, using a tabletop arrangement of stones, pieces of mirrors, broccoli, and the like as a model. His later work was characterised by a light palette and easy, economical strokes.

His more famous works, The Blue Boy; Mr. and Mrs. Andrews; The Painters Daughters Chasing a Butterfly; William Hallett and His Wife Elizabeth, known as The Morning Walk; and , display the unique individuality of his subjects. Joshua Reynolds considered Girl with Pigs “the best picture he (Gainsborough) ever painted or perhaps ever will”.

Thomas Gainsborough’s works became popular with collectors from the 1850s on.

He died of cancer on 2 August 1788 at the age of 61. According to his daughter Peggy, his last words were “Van Dyck”. He is interred in the churchyard St. Anne’s Church, Kew, Surrey.